The North American company Corsair is known to Russian consumers primarily as a manufacturer of RAM modules, computer cases, high-quality fans and a wide range of various peripherals. Recently the company began to produce under the Origin satellite brand, compact computers and even individual for custom liquid cooling systems. Separately, it is worth noting the maintenance-free Hydro Series liquid cooling systems, which have been successfully evolving for several generations.
But Corsair somehow didn’t work out with air coolers. The first one is - appeared 10 years ago, but did not gain success among users, since it had a rather prosaic design and was more expensive than its competitors ($59,99). And now, after such a long pause, in 2020 the company is releasing a completely new model called , designed for overclockers or simply connoisseurs of effective cooling.
The cooler really turned out to be quite ambitious. A huge radiator, more than one and a half kilograms of weight, two 120 mm fans with hurricane speeds and the cost of a new one . All this together makes the Corsair A500 promise to be unprecedentedly efficient in terms of cooling in all conditions. We will tell you in today's article whether the cooler will be able to meet expectations and at what cost.
Specifications and recommended cost
|
Name of technical characteristics |
corsair a500 |
|
Cooler dimensions (H × W × D), |
168 × × 171 143,5 |
|
(120×120×25) |
|
|
Gross weight, g |
1528 |
|
Weight utility factor, units. |
0,580 |
|
Radiator material and design |
Nickel-plated tower structure made of aluminum plates on 4 copper heat pipes with a diameter of 6 and 8 mm, which are part of the base (direct contact technology) |
|
Number of radiator plates, pcs. |
48 |
|
Radiator plate thickness, mm |
0,40-0,45 |
|
Intercostal distance, mm |
2,0 |
|
Estimated radiator area, cm2 |
10 415 |
|
Thermal resistance, °С/W |
n / a |
|
Fan type and model |
Corsair ML120 (2 pcs.) |
|
Fan impeller/stator diameter, mm |
109 / 43 |
|
Weight of one fan, g |
264 |
|
Fan rotation speed, rpm |
400 – 2400 Feet |
|
Airflow CFM |
76 (max) |
|
Noise level, dBA |
10,0 – 36,0 Feet |
|
Static pressure, mm H2O |
0,2 – 2,4 Feet |
|
Number and type of fan bearings |
Magnetic levitation |
|
Fan MTBF, hours/years |
40 / >000 |
|
Rated/starting voltage of the fan, V |
12 / 2,9 |
|
Fan current, A |
0,219 |
|
Declared/measured fan power consumption, W |
2×2,63 / 2×1,85 |
|
Fan cable length, mm |
600 (+ 300) |
|
The ability to install a cooler on processors with connectors |
Intel LGA1200/115x/2011(v3)/2066 |
|
Maximum processor TDP level, W |
250 |
|
Extras (features) |
The ability to adjust the fans on the radiator in height, Corsair XTM50 thermal paste |
|
Warranty period, years |
5 |
|
Retail price, rub. |
7 200 |
Packaging equipment
The Corsair A500 comes in a large cardboard box weighing over two kilograms. The box is decorated in yellow and black colors, and on the front side there is a cooler and the model name is indicated.
Key features of the Corsair A500, dimensions and brief technical specifications are given on the back of the box.
The package contents and list of compatible processor sockets can unexpectedly be found on the base of the box.
A double-leaf plastic box is inserted inside, between the parts of which a radiator with fans is sandwiched.
On top there is a small cardboard box with accessories. These include mounting kits for Intel and AMD platforms, screws and bushings, plastic ties and a Y-shaped splitter cable 300 mm long, a screwdriver, and instructions.
A separate syringe contains new thermal paste. , the thermal conductivity of which, unfortunately, is not disclosed by the manufacturer. Interestingly, the same thermal interface is already applied to the base of the cooler, so the tube can be used for several repeated applications, and the application process itself .
The recommended price for the Corsair A500 is $100 less one cent. In Russia, the cooler is already sold at prices ranging from 7,2 to 9,6 thousand rubles - hello, post-coronavirus market reality! Let's add that the cooler comes with a five-year warranty and is manufactured in China.
Design features
Perhaps, if you choose a term that most accurately describes the design of the new Corsair A500, then “monumental” would be better than others. Indeed, the North American company's recently released cooling system gives the impression of a solid and grandiose device.
|
|
|
A dark nickel-plated heatsink with heat pipes and two black fans with gray impellers emphasize the seriousness of the Corsair A500's intentions. And only the plastic cover with a polished texture and mesh perforations on top of the radiator adds at least some notes of modern style.
|
|
|
The impression of the cooler's monumentality is far from just visual, since it weighs 1528 grams, of which 886 grams are for the radiator. The processor cooler weight utility coefficient we just came up with, calculated as the ratio of the radiator mass to the total cooler mass, for the Corsair A500 is equal to 0,580. For comparison: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black has 0,739, Phanteks PH-TC14PE (2019) – 0,742, and Zalman CNPS20X has 0,775 units. Not the best indicator for Corsair, to be honest.
The dimensions of the Corsair A500 match its weight: the cooler height is 168 mm, width – 171 mm, and depth – 143,5 mm. By design, the cooling system is a tower cooler with an aluminum radiator on heat pipes and two 120 mm fans installed at the ends of the radiator.
|
|
|
The fans work in a blow-out mode, driving the air flow through the fins of the radiator, the sides of which are not closed, so some of the air will inevitably escape through them.
On top of the radiator there is a plastic cover with a mesh and the manufacturer’s logo.
|
|
|
The lid sits on a fairly thick plastic frame, secured to the radiator with screws. Obviously, this plastic frame is an unnecessary and even harmful thing on a processor cooler, but for the sake of design it had to be installed.
|
|
|
By unscrewing it, you can get to the radiator and the ends of the heat pipes. Inside the radiator there is a rectangular cutout with rounded corners.
Through it you can get to the clamping screws, and thanks to this cutout the weight of the radiator is reduced. The latter consists of 48 aluminum plates, each 0,40-0,45 mm thick, pressed onto heat pipes with an interfin distance of 2,0 mm. There is no soldering in the Corsair A500 radiator. The ends of the radiator on both sides have a sawtooth profile to reduce resistance to the air flow of fans and increase the efficiency of the cooler at low speeds.
Let's add that the estimated radiator area is quite decent 10 415 cm2.
The radiator uses four heat pipes: two with a diameter of 8 mm and two with a diameter of 6 mm. It is strange that the engineers designed their passage in the radiator fins closer to the edges, rather than moving them closer to the center, which would have been more logical from the point of view of uniform heat distribution along the fins.
The same Corsair XTM50 thermal interface is already applied to the base of the radiator. Moreover, it is applied over the entire area of the base with many small squares with a millimeter distance from each other.
In terms of uniform application of the thermal interface, this approach is quite justified, but in terms of quantity, it is not. Look how much excess thermal paste was squeezed out onto the edges and how thick the contact layer itself turned out to be.
We made two cooler swaps on the processor with the heatsink rotated 90 degrees and in both cases we got full prints all over the processor heat spreader.
|
|
|
|
|
|
And here is what the result of installing a cooler on a processor looks like when using the optimal amount of Arctic MX-4 thermal paste.
|
|
|
As they say, the difference is visible to the naked eye.
As for the base itself, as you probably already guessed, it is made using direct contact technology without gaps between the tubes. The main load is borne by two central heat pipes with a diameter of 8 mm.
The quality of processing of the contact surface of the base is satisfactory.
Two 120 mm fans are installed on the cooler radiator with a black plastic frame and a gray seven-bladed impeller with a diameter of 109 mm. The fans are secured with screws in massive plastic frames and, if necessary, can be replaced with other models of this form factor.
The fans operate synchronously according to the “blowing-blowing” scheme and are regulated by pulse-width modulation in the range from 400 to 2400 rpm. The maximum airflow of each fan can reach 76 CFM, the static pressure varies from 0,2 to 2,4 mm H2O, and the noise level ranges from 10 to 36 dBA.
The fan stator diameter is 43 mm. On its sticker you can find the Corsair logo and electrical characteristics: 12 V and 0,219 A. The declared power consumption level of each fan is 2,63 W, but, according to our measurements, it was only 1,85 W, which is very low for such a maximum speed .
A special feature of the “turntables” is the type of bearing on which they are based – a bearing with magnetic levitation. Thanks to its use, the noise level is reduced and the service life of the fans is increased. The latter is indirectly confirmed by the five-year warranty period of the cooler, although there are enough fans on the market with conventional hydrodynamic bearings, the service life of which can be 5 or even 8 years.
To secure the fans to the radiator, special plastic guides with clamps are used.
Thanks to this method of fixation, the fans can be raised up on the radiator to ensure compatibility of the cooler with tall RAM modules.
This is the cooler Corsair came up with. Now let's see how it is installed on the processor and board.
Compatibility and installation
Corsair A500 is compatible with Intel LGA1200/115x/2011(v3)/2066 processors and AMD Socket AM4/AM3(+)/AM2 processors. In our opinion, it is strange that a cooler costing $99,99 does not provide the ability to install on AMD Socket TR4 processors. This is one of the disadvantages of the new product.
The proprietary cooler mounting system is called Corsair hold fast and is clearly demonstrated in the following video.
At the same time, the set of mounts for the Corsair cooler (left) for Intel LGA2011(v3)/2066 processors completely replicates the same set from Noctua (right).
First, threaded rods are screwed into the base of the processor socket support plate.
The guide plates are then secured to these studs with screws. Their correct orientation is with waves outward from the socket.
|
|
|
Next, the radiator without fans is installed on the processor and, using the long screwdriver included in the kit, is attached to the processor with two spring-loaded screws.
The clamping force is high, but both screws must be tightened until they stop. The main thing is to do this evenly, one or two turns of each screw at a time.
The radiator installed on the processor does not interfere with tall RAM modules, but still take note that the distance from the base of the cooler to the bottom plate of the radiator is 40 mm.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The final stage of installing the Corsair A500 on the board is attaching the fans to the radiator, for which you just need to slide them down along the guides, and fixing the top decorative cover.
|
|
|
On our platform, we could install the cooler in any orientation, but during testing we did not find any difference in efficiency between these positions. Let us add that the Corsair A500 does not have backlighting, but the company’s product range includes the same ML fans , which backlight fans can replace the standard ones with.
Test configuration, tools and testing methodology
The efficiency of the Corsair A500 and its competitor was assessed in a system unit with the following configuration:
- motherboard: (Intel X299 Express, LGA2066, BIOS P1.90 dated 29.11.2019/XNUMX/XNUMX);
- Processor: Intel Core i9-7900X 3,3-4,5GHz (Skylake-X, 14++nm, U0, 10×1024KB L2, 13,75MB L3, TDP 140W);
- thermal interface: (8,5 W/(m K);
- RAM: DDR4 4 × 8 GB , XMP 3600 MHz 18-22-22-42 CR2 @ 1,35V;
- video card: 8GB/256bit, 1470-1650(1830)/14000MHz;
- drives:
- for system and benchmarks: Intel SSD 730 480 GB (SATA III, BIOS vL2010400);
- for games and benchmarks: Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB (SATA II, 10000 rpm, 16 MB, NCQ);
- archive: Samsung Ecogreen F4 HD204UI 2 TB (SATA II, 5400 rpm, 32 MB, NCQ);
- body: (six 140 mm , 990 rpm, three – for blowing, three – for blowing), side panel removed;
- control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC3;
- PSU: Corsair AX1500i Digital ATX (1,5kW, 80 Plus Titanium), 140mm fan.
We especially draw your attention to the fact that in today's tests we removed the side panel of the system unit case so as not to limit the performance of the two standard Corsair A500 fans, the maximum speed of which reaches 2400 rpm. Otherwise, the cooler would move air around itself in the case, since the ventilation system of our test Thermaltake Core X71, like any other computer case, is not capable of supplying and removing air for such high-speed fans. Therefore, the results shown by the coolers in today's article are not comparable to any other results from our tests.
At the first stage of evaluating the efficiency of cooling systems, the frequency of a ten-core processor at BCLK 100 MHz with a fixed value 42 multiplier and set to the first (highest) level of stabilization of the Load-Line Calibration function was fixed at the level 4,2 GHz with increasing voltage in the BIOS of the motherboard to 1.041-1,042 V.
The TDP level was slightly more than 215 watts. The VCCIO and VCCSA voltages were set to 1,050 and 1,075 V, respectively, CPU Input – 2,050 V, CPU Mesh – 1,100 V. In turn, the voltage of the RAM modules was fixed at 1,35 V, and its frequency was 3,6 GHz with standard timings 18-22-22-42 CR2. In addition to the above, several more changes were made to the motherboard BIOS related to overclocking the processor and RAM.
Testing was conducted on Microsoft Windows 10 Pro version 1909 (18363.815). Software used for the test:
- - to create a load on the processor (Small FFTs mode, two consecutive cycles of 13-14 minutes each);
- – for temperature monitoring and visual control of all system parameters.
A full snapshot during one of the testing cycles looks like this.
The load on the processor was created by two consecutive cycles of Prime95. It took 14-15 minutes to stabilize the processor temperature between cycles. The final result, which you will see in the diagram, is the maximum temperature of the hottest of the ten cores of the CPU at peak load and in idle mode. In addition, a separate table will show the temperatures of all processor cores, their average values and the temperature delta between the cores. The temperature in the room was monitored by an electronic thermometer installed next to the system unit with a measurement accuracy of 0,1 °C and with the possibility of hourly monitoring of changes in the temperature in the room over the past 6 hours. During this test, the temperature fluctuated in the range 25,6 – 25,9 Feet ° C.
The noise level of cooling systems was measured with an electronic sound level meter "» in the period from zero to three in the morning in a completely closed room of about 20 m2 with double-glazed windows. The noise level was measured outside the case of the system unit, when the source of noise in the room was only the cooling system and its fans. The sound level meter, fixed on a tripod, was always located strictly at one point at a distance of exactly 150 mm from the fan rotor. The cooling systems were placed at the very corner of the table on a foamed polyethylene substrate. The lower measurement limit of the sound level meter is 22,0 dBA, and the subjectively comfortable (please do not confuse it with low!) noise level of cooling systems when measured from such a distance is about 36 dBA. For a conditionally low noise level, we take a value of 33 dBA.
We will compare the efficiency and noise level of the Corsair A500 with those of a super cooler ($99,9), equipped with two standard fans.
|
|
|
The rotation speed of all cooling system fans was adjusted using with an accuracy of ±10 rpm in the range from 800 rpm to their maximum in increments of 200 or 400 rpm.
In addition to testing the Corsair A500 in its usual form, we conducted an additional test of its effectiveness with the top decorative cover removed, the plastic frame securing it unscrewed, as well as with the side edges of the radiator and the top hole sealed with tape.
|
|
|
The results of the Corsair A500 with this modification are shown in the diagram with the mark modded. Let’s also add that we tested coolers with Arctic MX-4 thermal paste, which in the bottom line turned out to be 1,5-2 degrees Celsius more efficient than the XTM500 thermal interface native to the Corsair A50.
Test results and their analysis
Cooling efficiency
Despite the high level of cooling efficiency, the Corsair A500 can hardly be called a super cooler, since even at the maximum speed of its two 120 mm fans of 2400 rpm, it loses to the two-section Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black with 1450 rpm by four degrees Celsius at peak loads. Modifying the radiator with tape allows you to increase the efficiency of the cooler by another two degrees Celsius, but this is not enough to reach the same level as one of the best air coolers.
We can observe the same efficiency ratio when the fan speed is reduced: the Corsair A500 is inferior by 4 degrees Celsius. Interestingly, at speeds of 800 and 1200 rpm, a radiator modified with tape gives a gain of only 1 degree Celsius at peak load, that is, the concentration of the fan air flow entirely on the plates and tubes of the radiator gives an effect only at medium and high fan speeds, and in quiet modes This is of little use.
Another point that I would like to note in the Corsair A500 tests is the unevenness of heat removal. Compare the temperature delta between the cores of a ten-core processor from Corsair and Noctua coolers using the table. If for NH-D15 it is 8-10 degrees Celsius, then for A500 it is 15-16 degrees Celsius. In other words, the heat pipes at the base of the cooler do not work equally efficiently. Perhaps the outer six-millimeter tubes are failing, or perhaps the entire package of two pairs of tubes of different diameters is not very suitable for the large Intel Skylake-X crystal.
Next we increased the processor frequency to 4,3 GHz at voltage in motherboard BIOS In 1,072.
The calculated heat dissipation of the processor at this frequency and voltage exceeds 240 watt, that is, this is actually the limit for the Corsair A500, which was confirmed by our further tests.
The balance of power has not changed: we still see a four-degree lag between the Corsair A500 and the Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black and a two-degree increase in efficiency after removing the plastic and modifying the radiator with tape. It is important to note that at fan speeds of 1200 and 800 rpm, the Corsair cooler could no longer cope with cooling such a processor, as did the Noctua at 800 rpm. The Corsair A500 did not submit to the next overclocking step - 4,4 GHz at 1,118 V, even at maximum fan speeds. Therefore, next we move on to measuring the noise level.
Noise level
At the same fan speeds as the Noctua, the Corsair A500 is quieter, as it should be, given the different fan sizes of the two coolers tested today. But at maximum speed, where the A500 demonstrates efficiency close to the NH-D15, the difference is seriously not in Corsair's favor. At 2400 rpm, the new cooler is not only uncomfortable - it is devilishly noisy and, in our opinion, is not suitable for a home computer. At the border of subjective comfort, the Corsair A500 fan speed is 1130 rpm, while the Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black is 900 rpm, and at the border of relative noiselessness, the speed ratio of these two coolers is 1000 to 820 rpm. Still, this advantage in Corsair A500 fan speed is not enough to compensate for the lag in cooling efficiency. At the minimum speeds of the Corsair fans, the cooler operates quietly; there is no rattling of the bearings or vibrations of the impellers at any orientation of the fans in space.
Conclusion
The Corsair A500 impressed us with its enormous weight and impressive dimensions. The cooler looks very serious and makes just as serious noise. At the same time, it is quite efficient, even if this efficiency is achieved at the cost of a high noise level - not every air cooler can cope with cooling an overclocked ten-core processor. Among the strengths of the new product, we note the reliable fastening and simple installation procedure, compatibility with all common processors, the ability to adjust the fans in height for compatibility with high RAM modules, as well as the fans themselves with a significant service life and quiet bearings. In addition, the A500 kit includes a screwdriver and an additional thermal interface in the syringe (in addition to the one pre-applied to the base).
With all that said, it is obvious that the Corsair A500 could be made better than it is now. There is no soldering in the radiator, the heat pipes are not optimally distributed among the plates, and the sides of the plates are not covered by the ends of the fins bent down. It is difficult to judge the success of the combination of eight- and six-millimeter heat pipes in the radiator; tests of different combinations are needed, but the unevenness of heat removal from the processor indicates that there is a problem in this aspect of the radiator (at least this is true for the Intel Skylake-X core). In addition, there is a lot of unnecessary plastic hanging on the radiator and fans, which obviously does not help improve the efficiency of the cooler and reduce its weight. Finally, a cooler costing $99,99 is for some reason incompatible with AMD Socket TR4, and fan lighting would certainly add to its chances of commercial success, especially since Corsair has such fans in its product range.
To summarize, we would recommend waiting for the second version of the A500, where the company will, hopefully, eliminate the cooler's shortcomings. And now instead of it, for the same money it looks much more interesting, for example, .
Source: 3dnews.ru